


the stars the moon

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 21:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: ficlets written for juno steel fluff week





	1. trust, huh?

Date Night

\--

(A crowded bar in downtown Hyperion. Evening.)

JUNO (NARRATOR) :  
I’ve heard people say that Hyperion City is worth a stop on a galaxy-wide tour for three things: the shops, the streams, and the nightlife. If you ask me, everything north of Oldtown is overpriced, there hasn’t been a stream worth watching in years, and the only nightlife worth bothering with is making it through the night. Alive.

My name’s Juno Steel, and my idea of a good night is a half-decent bottle of whisky and my own goddamn couch.

NUREYEV:  
Juno, are you sure there’s a bar in here? I can barely even see the floor.

JUNO:  
Believe me, you don’t want to see the floor. Or the walls or any of the booths.

NUREYEV:  
Should we try somewhere else, perhaps? Somewhere a little less unctuous and liable to erupt into violence? 

JUNO:  
(Good-Natured)  
You want class you should’ve stayed on Neptune, Nureyev. We aren’t gonna find anywhere less crowded this time of night. You just gotta put your back into it a little.

(They elbow their way to the bar)

JUNO (Narrator)  
That guy is Peter Nureyev. He’s my…I mean. He’s the guy who’s been showing up at my apartment recently. Always unannounced and usually through a window that I’m always certain I locked.

JUNO:  
What are you drinking?

NUREYEV:  
I’ll have whatever you’re having.

JUNO  
(Snorts)  
Think you can keep up?

NUREYEV:  
Notice I did not say I’ll have as many as you’re having. Not all of us have a liver like a sponge.

ALESSANDRA:  
(From across the room)  
Steel. Hey, Steel!

JUNO:  
(To himself)  
Well, there goes the neighborhood.

ALESSANDRA:  
Steel, I know you can hear me.

NUREYEV:  
(Amused)  
It seems you’re being summoned, Detective.

JUNO:  
Alessandra Strong, and a plus one. They’re sitting at a booth by the door—trust Alessandra to get the best seat in the house that also happens to the most defensible. The woman with her is a little younger, but looks just as lethal. Her wife. I’ve never met the woman, but hey. I am a detective.

I hand Nureyev his whisky and we push our way across to them.

JUNO:  
Alessandra. It’s been a while.

ALESSANDRA:  
It has, hasn’t it? This is Talia.

TALIA:  
Nice to finally meet you, Detective Steel. We would have invited you to the wedding, but well…we thought you were dead at the time.

ALESSANDRA:  
We were off-planet when we heard about your resurrection. 

NUREYEV:  
He does have a knack for those

ALESSANDRA:  
(A little confused. She’s not used to Juno having friends.)  
I don’t think we’ve met.

JUNO:  
Oh, right. This is, uh—

NUREYEV:  
Peter.

JUNO  
(Shocked. Nureyev doesn’t just offer his name.)  
What—

NUREYEV:  
You must be the legendary detective Strong.  
(Admiring. He isn’t used to Juno having friends either.)  
Juno’s told me about your little vacation underground.

JUNO: Nur—  
(CUTS HIMSELF OFF. REALIZES THAT IF HE USES ’NUREYEV’, THEY WILL HAVE HIS FULL NAME.)  
Uh. P-Peter is—  
(HE STILL HAS A HARD TIME CALLING THE GUY HE’S SLEEPING WITH BY HIS FIRST NAME, BECAUSE HE IS A DISASTER.)

JUNO (NARRATOR):  
Luckily, Nureyev takes over from there. The guy might be a crook and a blanket-hog and take thirty minute showers, but he can definitely give good small talk. He and Talia are deep in Outer Rim politics in thirty seconds flat.

Alessandra keeps shooting me looks. It’s been years since I’ve had a mind-reading pill lodged behind my eye, but I can still read hers loud and clear. Is this the guy?

I don’t know, Alessandra. I honestly don’t know.

(BACK AT THE BAR FOR ANOTHER ROUND).

NUREYEV:  
I like Talia. Unusual politics, but—

JUNO:  
You gave them your name.

NUREYEV:  
Hmm? Oh, did I?  
(COMPLETELY FEIGNED. HE DID AND HE KNOWS IT.)  
I suppose I did. Well.

JUNO:  
(IN BETWEEN SIPS OF HIS DRINK, WHICH IS ANOTHER DOUBLE WHISKY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH)  
What, planning on moving into retirement? Or do you think the Brahman authorities have decided to just live and let live?  
(HE’S IRRITATED AND HE ISN’T SURE WHY.)

NUREYEV:  
Hmm, well…I know I don’t know the backstreets the way you do, Juno, but I doubt the Brahman secret police have managed to infiltrate every Hyperion bar—

JUNO:  
(TOP)  
Alessandra and Talia could give you up.

NUREYEV:  
(RAISED EYEBROWS)  
Do you have any reason to think they would?

JUNO:  
Of course not, but—

NUREYEV:  
They’re your friends, Juno. You trust them. Ergo—I trust them.

JUNO:  
(FINISHES HIS DRINK AND PUTS THE GLASS DOWN.)  
Trust, huh?

NUREYEV:  
I believe we’ve touched on the subject before.

JUNO:  
(SIGHING, BUT FOND)  
Once. Or twice.


	2. wolves move in packs

found family, juno + kanagawas 

\--

It’s late enough that the janitors have started vacuuming and Juno’s brain is oozing out of his ears. The evidence doesn’t make any more sense than it did when he’d sat down with it this afternoon. Everyone else had headed home hours ago.

The comms’ beep echoes in the empty precinct. “Steel.”

“Juno Steel, I know you’re in there. Come out, Juno Steel.” A soft, sugary voice that drips with ill intention.

Juno rubs at the headache forming behind his eyes. “Cassandra, I don’t have time for jokes. Did you need something?”

“You don’t have time for anybody anymore, Junebug.” Another flavor of the same voice, the vowels drawn down into a pout. “Not for fun, not for friends. And here we drove all the way out here to pick you up.”

“Cecil, you too? What—?”

A horn blasts through the precinct, shrill and repetitive and impossible to mistake.

“Could you not?” Juno grumbles. “I got a headache.”

“Nothing some good scotch won’t cure,” Cecil says. “And Daddy’s parties always have an open bar.”

“Have one of those for me, would you? I got work to do.”

“Work, work, work, is that all you care about?”

“We aren’t taking no for an answer. We didn’t come all the way downtown just to soak up the ambience.”

Juno slumps back in his creaky chair. “You want me to come to your father’s party? I’m in work clothes.”

“We’ll get you something on the way,” Cecil sniffs, like Juno is being silly.

“I thought birthdays were family-only events.”

“Don’t be silly, Junebug! Daddy would adopt you if you weren’t—.”

Juno switches his comms from one ear to the other. “Oldtown scum?”

“A grown man,” Cassandra breaks in. “But keep talking dirty like that I might forget you’re like a brother to me.”

Cecil makes a gagging noise, but recovers quickly. “You know, Juno. Daddy put you in his will.”

Juno presses his comms between his ear and shoulder, freeing his hands to gather up documents into folders and stuff his badge into his pocket. “Please tell me you’re joking.” He shoves his blaster into his waistband and downs the lukewarm dregs of his coffee.

“I never joke about family, Junebug,” Cecil croons. “Or money. Or anything else important.”

Juno laughs. “I don’t know what scares me more, Cee—the fact that I believe or the fact that you believe you.”

He ends the call and pushes his way out of the precinct doors. The rain makes oily, shining tracks across the pavement, the car’s headlights cutting the world into two parts. Two heads hang out of the car’s windows. Cecil’s dyed hair and Cassandra’s glasses make them not immediately identifiable as twins—but those smiles. The identical smiles of wolves scenting fresh meat.

Juno sees them but Cecil lays on the horn anyway, because his two joys in life are media attention and being a pain in the ass.

Juno gets in, which he was always going to do. Because wolves move in packs.


End file.
